MLB: Nix helps Halladay pop the bubbly on No. 200

MIAMI — Getting a win doesn’t necessarily mean a pitcher has performed well.

Getting 200 wins does.There wasn’t much of a doubt that someday, somehow, Roy Halladay was going to reach that threshold. One big outburst by his teammates at the plate, one minimalistic effort at the right time — heck, a well-placed relief appearance would get the job done.

But that isn’t how the right-hander wanted to get there. If he was going to flip the number in his win column from 199 to 200, he wanted it to be earned.

Sunday afternoon, after months and months of turmoil and uncertainty, he earned it.

Surrounded by judgements not about whether he could be half the pitcher he was, but if there was even a drop left in his gas tank, Halladay pitched eight gutsy innings that got better as he moved on. However, it wasn’t until Laynce Nix went to bat for him in the top of the ninth and hit a solo homer that Halladay got the run needed for a 2-1 win over the Marlins, No. 200 of his admirable career.

After the game, the Phillies presented Halladay with a bottle of champagne to honor the milestone win, a feat achieved by 112 pitchers. He thanked his teammates and coaches for the display of respect, but stressed that he has a team goal that overrides any personal landmarks.

“I want to win a World Series, and that’s why I’m here,” Halladay said when asked if he had any emotional release upon getting win No. 200. “That’s why I want to play. The personal milestones are great. My son, my wife, my family — they are all excited about it. But to me, the ultimate goal is to get to the playoffs and win a World Series, and when that happens I’m going to go in the back room and yell.”

That doesn’t mean the game was without poignancy to the right-hander. This is a man who dragged himself across the finish line in 2012 with a two-ton bag of mediocrity strapped to his back. Then, after changing his physical regimen in order to better accommodate his back and shoulder, he struggled badly in spring training and even more so in a pair of shockingly short and ineffective starts against Atlanta and Kansas City.

Halladay’s struggles have been so pronounced and noteworthy that National Public Radio woke its morning listeners Sunday with a segment that all but eulogized him as a pitcher who went from dominating to cooked.

It must be noted that Halladay pitched against a team that scored four runs over the weekend, has scored just 22 runs in 12 games this season and is 2-10 with little hint that things could get much better. Oh, and slugger Giancarlo Stanton missed his third straight game with a sore shoulder. And Austin Kearns was taken to the hospital Sunday morning after suffering heart palpitations and was kept overnight.

“You’re right, they haven’t scored as many runs and Stanton isn’t in there offensively,” Halladay said, “so they haven’t been as good. But I feel like if I can make pitches confidently and early in the count, I can be successful.”

In truth, Halladay in the first couple of innings — much as he did in his first two games — struggled with his location and in finding all of his pitches. However, given the break of facing a flimsy Marlins lineup, he got away with starting slow. And once he reached the middle innings, he began to get quick outs with few pitches.

It was like watching vintage Halladay at work.

“Yeah, the biggest thing is to throw strikes early in the count, get ahead, mix pitches and throw them for strikes,” Halladay said. “That’s something I hadn’t done against either of the other two teams.

“There are a lot of things you can’t control. And for some reason I felt like I had to control those things. I’ve never been that way, and for some reason coming in I felt like I had to prove that I was healthy. I had to prove that I was effective. There were a lot of things that I had no control over, but were getting in the way of going out and making pitches.

“My focus this whole was week was: What’s my job? How can I help us? How can I do my job effectively and not get caught up with everything else going on?”

The Phils got Halladay a 1-0 lead in the top of the sixth when Ryan Howard doubled to open the frame, then scored on a Michael Young single. However, the Phils failed to do more damage in that inning and several others, as they couldn’t take full advantage of 11 hits on the afternoon.

In the bottom of the seventh the Marlins tied the game when Chris Valaika squirted a single through the infield to score Justin Ruggiano, who had opened the inning with a bloop single to right.

It seemed Halladay might be denied the win, but he returned to pitch a strong eighth, then Nix gave him a huge lift in the pinch.

“It was really cool for me to be a part of that,” Nix said of Halladay’s 200th win. “It didn’t hit me until we came back in.

“Looking at the way the ball was coming out of his hand, he looked great ... That was good to see.”

Although Halladay deflected the personal praise and replaced it with a team vision, he admitted there was excitement when Nix’s homer landed in the second deck down the right-field line.

“I was (in the clubhouse),” Halladay said. “I didn’t want to sit on the bench. My program always has been as soon as I’m done, I come up here and get my work done. I didn’t want to screw anything up.

“He hit it, and man, it’s a great feeling. It really is a great feeling to come out of the game, have someone step up for you like that and be able to get a win out of it. It really is a great feeling.”

Halladay joined Tim Wakefield, George Uhle and Chuck Finley at 200 victories. He would like to go well past them and prove that there are more quality starts left in his aging body.